Wes Covington (1932 - 2011)

John Wesley Covington (March 27, 1932 – July 4, 2011) was a left fielder in Major League Baseball who played from 1956 through 1966 for the Milwaukee Braves, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers. Listed at 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m), 205 lb, he batted left-handed […]

Johnny Callison (1939 - 2006)

Johnny Callison became a fan favorite in Philadelphia; Supreme Court Justice and lifelong Phillies fan Samuel Alito recalls he “adopted Johnny Callison out there in right field” as a boy. Over the next decade, Callison would be named to the NL All-Star roster three times (1962, 64-65).[b] In 1962, he batted an even .300, the […]

Chris Short (1937 - 1991)

Christopher Joseph “Style” Short (September 19, 1937 – August 1, 1991) was a Major League Baseball pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies (1959–1972), and in his final year, for the Milwaukee Brewers (1973). He was a left-handed pitcher, but batted righty. He was born in Milford, Delaware. Chris Short was considered a top pitcher from 1964 […]

Jim Bunning (1931 - 2017)

James Paul David Bunning (October 23, 1931 – May 26, 2017) was an American professional baseball pitcher and later a politician who represented constituents from Kentucky in both chambers of the United States Congress. He is the sole Major League Baseball athlete to have been elected to both the United States Senate and the National […]

Betsy Drake (1923 - 2015)

Betsy Drake began looking for work as an actress in New York City, supporting herself by working as a Conover model. She met the playwright Horton Foote, who offered her a job as an understudy in his play Only the Heart, which enabled her to join the Actors’ Equity Association and thus become a professional […]

Cheryl Holdridge (1944 - 2009)

Cheryl Holdridge first performed professionally at the age of nine in the New York City Ballet’s version of The Nutcracker in Los Angeles. Her first screen appearance was as an uncredited extra in the 1956 film production of Carousel. She auditioned for Walt Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club in the spring of 1956, was hired […]

Gottfried von Cramm (1909 - 1976)

In 1932, Gottfried von Cramm earned a place in the German Davis Cup team and won the first of four straight German national tennis championships. During this time he also teamed up with Hilde Krahwinkel to win the 1933 Mixed Doubles title at Wimbledon. Noted for his gentlemanly conduct and fair play, he gained the […]

Lance Reventlow (1936 - 1972)

Lance Reventlow began his racing career in America in the mid-1950s, initially with a Mercedes before moving to an 1100cc Cooper in 1956. The next year he went to Europe to buy a Maserati, which he crashed heavily at Snetterton, escaping unhurt. He also briefly drove a Cooper Formula 2 car, before returning to the […]

Porfirio Rubirosa (1909 - 1965)

In 1931, Porfirio Rubirosa met Rafael Trujillo at a country club. The “Benefactor” asked to see him the next morning, and made him a lieutenant of his Presidential Guard. Their relationship lasted throughout their lives, went up and down, mostly close, but not without episodes of danger for Porfirio Rubirosa, and defined his professional career […]

Barbara Hutton (1912 - 1979)

Barbara Woolworth Hutton (November 14, 1912 – May 11, 1979) was an American debutante, socialite, heiress and philanthropist. She was dubbed the “Poor Little Rich Girl,” first when she was given a lavish and expensive debutante ball in 1930, amid the Great Depression, and later due to a notoriously troubled private life. Heiress to the […]

Eleanor Post Hutton (1909 - 2006)

On April 12, 1930, Eleanor Post Hutton eloped with the playwright and director Preston Sturges (1898–1959). In 1932, she sought an annulment on the grounds that he was not legally divorced from his first wife when they eloped. Sturges’ screenplay for the 1933 film The Power and the Glory was loosely based on her stories […]

Edward Francis Hutton (1875 - 1962)

Edward Francis Hutton (September 7, 1875 – July 11, 1962) was an American financier and co-founder of E. F. Hutton & Co., one of the most respected financial firms in the United States. Hutton was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of James Laws Hutton (1847–1885), who left an Ohio farm to work […]

Dina Merrill (1923 - 2017)

On advice from her half-sister’s (then) husband, she adopted the stage name Dina Merrill, borrowing from Charles E. Merrill, a famous stockbroker like her father. Dina Merrill made her debut on the stage in the play The Mermaid Singing in 1945. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Merrill was believed to have intentionally been marketed […]

Kay Aldridge (1917 - 1995)

Katharine Gratten Aldridge was born on July 9, 1917 in Tallahassee, Florida. Her father was a surveyor and her mother was an artist and writer. Following her father’s death when she was two years old, her mother moved the family to Lyells, Virginia, where she and her four siblings were raised with the help of […]

Anthony Young (1966 - 2017)

Anthony Young attended Furr High School in Houston, Texas, and the University of Houston, where he played college baseball and college football for the Houston Cougars. The New York Mets selected Young in the 38th round of the 1987 Major League Baseball draft. He worked his way up through their minor league system, making his […]

Elsa Martinelli (1935 - 2017)

Born Elisa Tia in Grosseto, Tuscany, she moved to Rome with her family and in 1953 was discovered by Roberto Capucci who introduced her to the world of fashion. Elsa Martinelli became a model and began playing small roles in films. She appeared in Claude Autant-Lara’s Le Rouge et le Noir (1954), but her first […]

Nelsan Ellis (1977 - 2017)

In 2007, Nelsan Ellis was cast as Lafayette Reynolds in the pilot for True Blood, as a short order cook at Merlotte’s, a drug dealer, a member of Jason Stackhouse’s road crew, and Tara Thornton’s cousin. The pilot was shot in the early summer of 2007 and was officially ordered to series in August. Production […]

Jules Verne (1828 - 1905)

Jules Gabriel Verne (/dʒuːlz/ /vɜːrn/; French: [ʒyl vɛʁn]; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Jules Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to […]

John Kipling (1897 - 1915)

John Kipling was 16 when the First World War broke out in August 1914. His father, a keen imperialist and patriot, was soon writing propaganda on behalf of the British government. Rudyard sought to get his son a commission, but John was rejected by the Royal Navy due to severe short-sightedness. He was also initially […]

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (/ˈrʌdjərd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ RUD-yərd KIP-ling (rhotic); 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Rudyard Kipling’s works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888). His poems include “Mandalay” (1890), “Gunga Din” […]

Edith Nesbit (1858 - 1924)

Edith Nesbit was born in 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane in Kennington, Surrey (now part of Greater London), the daughter of an agricultural chemist, John Collis Nesbit, who died in March 1862, before her fourth birthday. Her sister Mary’s ill health meant that the family travelled around for some years, living variously in Brighton, […]

Kenneth Grahame (1859 - 1932)

Kenneth Grahame wanted to attend Oxford University, but was not allowed to do so by his guardian on grounds of cost. Instead he was sent to work at the Bank of England in 1879, and rose through the ranks until retiring as its Secretary in 1908 due to ill health, which may have been precipitated […]

Norman Hunter (1899 - 1995)

Norman George Lorimer Hunter (23 November 1899 – 23 February 1995) was a British children’s author, creator of Professor Branestawm. Norman Hunter was born in Sydenham, England, on 23 November 1899. He attended Beckenham County School for Boys (later known as Beckenham and Penge Grammar School and then Langley Park School for Boys). He left […]

Willis Hall (1929 - 2005)

Born in Hunslet, Leeds, Willis Hall was the only son and elder child of Walter Hall, an engineer’s fitter, and his wife, Gladys (née Gibbon). He attended local council schools as well as Cockburn High School. After graduation, Hall worked in a variety of positions including factory worker, trawler hand, and amusement park attendant. Upon […]

Babette Cole (1950 - 2017)

Babette Cole (Jersey, 10 September 1950 – 15 January 2017) was an English children’s writer and illustrator. Babette Cole was born on Jersey in the Channel Islands. She attended the Canterbury College of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) and received first-class BA Honours. She worked on such children’s programmes as Bagpuss (working […]

Barbara Mertz (1927 - 2013)

Barbara Mertz was born on September 29, 1927, in Canton, Illinois. She was graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in 1947, a master’s degree in 1950, and a PhD in Egyptology in 1952, having studied with John A. Wilson. She authored two books on ancient Egypt (both of which have been […]

Jane Aiken Hodge (1917 - 2009)

Jane Aiken Hodge (December 4, 1917 – June 17, 2009) was an American-born British writer. Born near Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second child of Pulitzer prize-winning poet Conrad Aiken and his first wife, the writer Jessie McDonald. Jane Hodge was 3 years old when her family moved to Great Britain, settling in Rye, East Sussex where […]

Joan Aiken (1924 - 2004)

Joan Aiken produced more than a hundred books, including more than a dozen collections of fantasy stories, plays and poems, and modern and historical novels for adults and children. She was a lifelong fan of ghost stories, particularly those of M. R. James, Fitz James O’Brien and Nugent Barker. Some of her books focus on […]

Helen Cresswell (1934 - 2005)

Helen Cresswell had great “popular impact” because she “diversified into writing for television, in 1960, with a script for what was then called Jack Playhouse, bringing simple storytelling to BBC children’s TV.” She tried writing for adults but succeeded with the child audience. Her first book was published in 1960, Sonya-by-the-Shore, and the Jumbo Spencer […]

Peggy Fortnum (1919 - 2016)

Margaret Emily Noel Fortnum (23 December 1919 – 28 March 2016) as pen name Peggy Fortnum was an English illustrator best known for illustrating children’s literature series Paddington Bear. Peggy Fortnum was born in England on 23 December 1919, at Harrow, Middlesex. She briefly attended Tunbridge Wells School of Art in 1939, before she enlisted […]